13 August 2011

Enough Reading... Some Mindset Reflections!

It seems that this poor blog is nothing but a repository of my book reviews! Unfortunately my only "free" time is to let my brain melt into books with very little true Thoughtful Spot time that is so needed. A more academic and less fun term could call it reflection time. However, with my brain full of exciting new ideas and passions from the conference, I have to detox before moving on to my more mundane brain space landlords, such as career related needs and never ending doctoral writing.

Although I do not cross discussion topics between my personal Thoughtful Spot from my career blog much like my Facebook account is personal and my Twitter account is professional, I was completely inspired by the motivational keynotes that acted as positive mindset development bookends to my own learning. Granted, the conference was about something specific (Agile), the topic itself to me is a mindset and approach to curriculum design and administration; however, the keynotes took me to a personal level and should be shared here too.

Here's what I wrote concerning my conference reflections on career blog.

Dr. Fredrickson kicked off the conference with a great connection of positivism into how experience life. Having positive emotions help us see more possibilities and are naturally creative, aligning well with the agile mindset. Those emotions expands our awareness and transforms us. However, masking negativity with the cliché “be positive” smiley emoticons is simply toxic insincerity, as noted by Dr. Fredrickson. Rather, we should create a mindset of positivity through being open, authentic, appreciative, and kind. This was anchored with (I assume Dr.) Linda Rising who pulled Dweck’s mindset research into the sphere of agile terminology, comparing fixed and agile mindsets. She pointed out that our mindsets determine goals, failure reactions, belief about effort and attitude towards others’ success. She gives a wonderful door of hope that mindsets are simply beliefs that can be changed through brain exercise and the desire for learning and challenge.

Cure (book review)

CureCure by Robin Cook

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



View all my reviews